A Woodworker’s CNC Router.

Yep..I’m impressed!!!!!

-- http://www.woodsongsfurniture.com

Great job. Did you write the software or are you using a commercial product.

-- Karson Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com

Steve -

Unbelievable! I really like theHouse Sign and Celtic Tenon, but the delicate wooden clock gears . . . those are really impressive!

-- http://foldingrule.blogspot.com

Intrigueing. I’m impressed.

-- Thos. Angle, Owyhee Design, Oregon

Now that is a project. Very impressive indeed… Great job….

-- Max "Desperado", Salt Lake City, UT

An amazing accomplishment! Any plans to blog your experience?

-- Jeff, St. Paul, MN

WOW – you are the man!!!

-- Bill - "Suit yourself and let the rest be pleased." http://www.cajunpen.com/

Absolutely outstanding!

-- Bob Vila would be so proud of you!

Great job Steve. Tell us more. Do you have a program that makes dovetails or do you have to program each project? Does it take less time to program or do the project freehand that is, have you reached the breakeven point yet? Will you be blogging any of the details. Even without pictures, the story would be fascinating to a lot of people I’m sure. Maybe you could blog a small project using the CNC router….

-- Jim

Awesome.

I don’t know if I’d want to make one myself but I’d sure like to know how you did it.

-- No piece is cut too short. It was meant for a smaller project.

Holy mackerel! That is absolutely unbelievable.

-- I've cut that board three times and it's still too short!

Hey Steve….. This is one that should get submitted to a magaizine.

-- I've cut that board three times and it's still too short!

I tip my hat to you!............tonight I shall raise a glass to you!

There are many things in life that I would never attempt…...........thats one of them!

Regards

-- http://www.furnituremann.ca/

Brlliant. I want to build one too – to complete the “Sketchup to build list to cutting list to CNC router” vision.

I’m particularly impressed that you did it all yourself from scratch and that it is built of wood – well done and what a beauty!

Will you be sharing your plans in any way? I have software, hardware and woodworking experience – I’m ready to get started!

Beware the home CNC router woodworking tool – everyone will have one soon.

-- Steve, New Zealand, www.steveracz.com

Fantastic job!
I always wanted to try building one of those.
Where did you get your linear actuators and bridge hardware.

Bob

-- A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner

Wow! That is an amzing feat of engineering combined with woodworking!

-- Charlie M. "Woodworking - patience = firewood"

Nice! I really like this sort of thing…marrying woodworking with technology. Brilliant!

-- You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. (Plato)

Outstanding job.

-- Carpe Lignum - Seize The Wood,

Way cool! I’ve got a controller and a handful of stepper motors here that I’ve been wanting to do that with, you got there first.

-- Dan Lyke, Lagunitas California, http://www.flutterby.net/User:DanLyke

Great work Steve. I would love to see the design, learn how you did it, etc. I would like to have one as well. The CNC’s you purchase are expensive, but this looks like it would bring the cost down considerably.

-- Bill, Turlock California, http://www.brookswoodworks.com

Wow, thanks for all the kind words. I hesitated posting it here because, you know, some people don’t consider it woodworking. Like the argument of machine cut versus hand cut dovetails. I see it as just another tool. Now I want to see how I can use it along with all my other tools and build some stuff. It is not always the most efficient was of accomplishing some things. The whole process of set-up can take a while, but then you can just crank ‘em out. Or better yet, use it to do an especially difficult job like a curved crest rail on a chair with mortises running on that curve with angled tenons on the ends, and you want 8 copies of it.

There are a lot of guys building this sort of thing. Not sure what they are going to do with them, nor are they as pretty as this one :) There is a HUGE site called CNCzone dedicated to all things CNC, pro and hobby. A lot of stuff there about every aspect, and a lot of good people. But much more on building and maintaining the machines than using them.

There are three major pieces of software involved. CAD (the creation part), CAM (picking router bits, feeds and speeds, etc) and Control (getting the motors to do what they were told). This is just like printing on a computer. You create the document (CAD), send it to the print driver and pick paper size etc (CAM), and then send it to the printer (Control). I have used various creation programs: Autocad, to Alibre’s full blown parametric CAD, to stuff like Inkscape or even just pdf and dxf documents. For CAM, I am using a product from Vectric that lets me do some creation and also does a ‘print preview’ simulation of the actual part, along with the toolpath G-code generation. It also has a neat feature using a V bit for sign making, note the square corners on the letters on the house sign (I think that is so cool). For Control I am using Mach3. This is a very popular program that runs on Windows XP. It converts the G-code to step and direction pulses for the motors. There is a dedicated PC located underneath the machine with a motor driver board connected to its parallel port.

As far as technical design points: Torsion boxes for the bed and the beam across the gantry. The gantry sides are skinned with yellow glued laminate, which resulted in a very strong panel. V-groove dual angular contact bearings riding on angle iron. 4 stepper motors driving ½ inch 8 turn 2 start (4 tpi) leadscrews spinning in fixed radial bearing driving anti-backlash lead nuts. Motor drivers from Hobby-CNC. T-track for hold down, and the clamps from my Leigh D4 to tighten the vise.

I am especially fond of the end vise. It is pretty unique as far as machines go, I believe. I modeled it after a standard dovetail jig. The two replaceable towers are used to hold a reference bar that is temporarily placed across them when the work piece is clamped. Then I set the depth of cut to the thickness of the mating piece. Just like a DT jig. All the dovetails in the picture were cut with the same G-code. Designs could be created to take this to an extreme to make dovetails shaped like hearts or placed on a curve, it one wanted to. The Celtic tenon was done as a proof of concept, just because I could. I don’t think I will ever use it, but who knows?

As far as making one yourself; go for it. What did it cost? I don’t want to add it all up. It can get complicated, time consuming, and expensive quite quickly if you want a usable machine. The flexing, alignment, and backlash are the most challenge, which you can solve with either money or time. I don’t have a complete set of plans, as things kept evolving, and updating plans can take a lot of time. I know of a few plans for free that are based on my second attempt at this, and other people finished the document part. There are probably a hundred of these being built, but I have a few changes…

Sorry about the ramble. I can try to explain more if anyone wants, or open up a discussion area for this from a woodworker’s point of view.

Oh, sad to say, but Sketchup does a lousy job of porting to a CNC machine, at least as far as I can figure out.

Steve.

-- Stevethepeeve -- I'm no rocket surgeon

Wow! I like it. That is crazy cool. I could not stop playing with that thing if I had one.

-- Kirk H. -- http://www.kjwoodworking.com

I too love it. Hope to see a forum on it soon. I feel CNC routers do have a place in wood shops, even if they are only used to create patterns or make many copies of the same parts. Keep up the innovative work, and remember the person who invented the dovetail jig was probability told that it did not belong in the wood shop, but now there are thousands of them in wood shops around the world.

-- Neal Meyers Jr

I had to comment on this one! I’ve just recently finished my CNC router and am still trying to make it do some of the useful things I had envisioned. My wife calls it Frank (short for Frankenstein). If yours performs half as good as it looks you have every right to be proud. Mine is not as rigid as I had hoped it would be.

I especially like what you did with the tail vise. What a great addition. It’s almost like having a 4rd axis. I want to cut the big dovetail used to connect a guitar neck to the body. This looks like it might work. I couldn’t tell from the picture how much you can cut beyond the table.

I’m real interested in the CAM software you are using. I have Mach3 for my controller and lazyCam for my CAM. I’m using DesignCad for the drawings. I want to do some 3d cutting but it seems lazyCam is not well suited for that.

I’d sure like to talk more about your experiences and what you learned along the way.

Hey Plumbseed, thanks. I am using Vcarve Pro from www.vectric.com for CAM. It is well put together. It also has a viewer and the ability to do some drawing of simple parts. They started out mostly as a sign making thing, but it morphed into something more. It ain’t free, and is mostly 2D. They also have photo and 3D packages. I needed something to make this portion of the CNC workflow easier, so I bought it. Lazy CAM does not do 3D as far as I remember. I am not too much into 3D carving.

I hear you about a machine that does not meet expectations. This is my third generation and has gone under two main updates. Costs start to add up, and the time and energy spent is incredible.

As far as the sliding dovetail for a guitar neck, I would cut that with a router and a special jig, and hand tools. That is a large and specialized joint. I do know of people on the web who are doing guitar making with a CNC.

Steve

-- Stevethepeeve -- I'm no rocket surgeon

Both amazing & inspiring!

-- Chris

“Wow” doesn’t seem like a big enough word. What a great project. What a great way to tickle your brain.

Thanks too for sharing the link to the CNC site. That’s how I find a lot of useful sites I never even thought to look for.

I’m a former programmer and AutoCAD guy, so the software side of this is right up my alley; less so the hardware interface. In many ways, your system is like the old pen plotters from the 80’s—but with a heavy, torqueing, dust-throwing router instead of a little pen.

Hey KDL, thanks. It is pretty neat. I’ve just got to find time to use it. Truthfully in a lot of ways, I was more excited designing and building it than using it. And I am not ashamed of that at all. Yes it was a real brain tickler.

I do have some ideas for some fancy joinery once I get the rest of the shop in order. I see it as a router table on steroids.

There is a two part blog about the building process here:
The build.

Steve

-- Stevethepeeve -- I'm no rocket surgeon

Very impressive!

-- I'm a wood magician... I can turn fine lumber into firewood before your very eyes! - http://www.woodworkersguide.com

Wow! Great job. Looks very professional. The projects that you have made with it turned out very well. From start to finish how much time do you have invested – building and software portions of it?

-- Bud, NY, http://tpww.libsyn.com/

Wow, that is quite an accomplishment! very impressive.

-- "Woodworking is my ticket to sanity" John, Upton, MA